


Living in the Moment

by neuronary



Series: Azula Week 2020 [7]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Azula Week 2020, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25358203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuronary/pseuds/neuronary
Summary: Zuko was meant to be closing up so that he could meet his friends for dinner. Key words: meant to be. He had been slightly delayed by his baby sister barging in thirty seconds before closing time and shoving an envelope into his hands.“Read it,” she hissed at him, looking a terrifyingly unfamiliar kind of murderous.Or, Azula gets into Harvard. She wasn't supposed to.
Relationships: Azula & Toph Beifong, Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Azula Week 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1803277
Comments: 21
Kudos: 484





	Living in the Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I am. Deeply dissatisfied with this. Originally, I had a character/relationship study on Mai and Azula slated for this prompt, but then my modern AU Azula post on tumblr blew up and someone asked if I'd write anything to do with it.
> 
> Anyway, I don't think it's perfect, but I'm practising deciding things are 'good enough'. So.
> 
> Enjoy
> 
> ~Neu

Azula stared at the letter in her hands.

_...delighted to inform you… _

She’d gotten in.

_ …the Committee on Admissions has admitted you to…  _

Harvard. She’d gotten in. Obviously. Even with her entire application geared towards business because her father had overseen every inch of it…

_ …personal congratulations for your outstanding achievements. _

Personal congratulations were lovely and all, but what the fuck was she supposed to do now?

What did people do when they got into Harvard? Go to Harvard. Except she couldn’t go to Harvard, because she was supposed to be going to Stanford for  _ business _ .

And now she’d gotten into Harvard for history.

_ Fuck. _

This entire plan had hinged on her not getting in. She wouldn’t get in, so she couldn’t go, couldn’t diverge from her father’s plan, but now she was staring at an acceptance letter from  _ Harvard University _ where she could go and study history and become a lawyer like she’d only ever let herself dream about because she knew that she  _ couldn’t _ .

Azula pressed her face into a pillow and had a little panic.

Just a little one.

\---

Zuko was meant to be closing up so that he could meet his friends for dinner. Key words: meant to be. He had been slightly delayed by his baby sister barging in thirty seconds before closing time and shoving an envelope into his hands.

“Read it,” she hissed at him, looking a terrifyingly unfamiliar kind of murderous. He read it.

When he looked up, Azula was stood perfectly still, so much so that he couldn’t be entirely sure she was breathing. She glanced back at him, face blank in that cautious, tense way that meant she didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing.

Zuko grinned at her and reached out for a hug. “This is amazing!”

Azula recoiled like he’d slapped her. “Are you out of your mind?”

“What?”

“I  _ got in _ , Zuko. This wasn’t supposed to happen! This… you… ugh!” Azula snatched the letter back. “I can go to Harvard, now, all of a sudden, and it… I’m not…”

Zuko reached out a hand again, letting it hover just over his sister’s shoulder. She stopped, taking a deep breath, and went back to the still silence she’d kept while he was reading.

“Okay,” he said, at last, thinking about Uncle, and how he always helped when Zuko used to get… well, not like this, this was a very Azula way of freaking out, but when he used to freak himself out. “Okay, let’s sit down. Let me just finish locking up, okay?”

Azula rolled her eyes, at least a little back to normal, but sat down obediently, pulling her knees up to her chest. She wasn’t wearing make-up, for once, and it made her look… younger. More recognisable as the same girl he’d left behind when he was thirteen.

Zuko shut the shop up quicker than usual.

“Okay,” he said, again, once he was settled in the armchair opposite her, because he wasn’t sure there was anything else to say. “Okay, um. What’s going on?”

Azula stared at him for a moment. “Nothing,” she said, at last. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“No,” Zuko said, feeling very much like his Uncle. “This is what big brothers are for.”

“It is?”

“I mean… I think so?”

It was enough to get her back in her seat, at least.

“Right,” Zuko changed tack. “What was the plan?”

“I wasn’t supposed to get in,” Azula said. “Zuko, you know I hate repeating myself, why-”

“Can you just” - Zuko took a quick breath - “Why would you apply if you didn’t want to get in?”

“I did want to get in,” Azula corrected him. Zuko bit back an exasperated groan and she seemed to pick up on the fact that he was going to need more detail. “It was supposed to prove that it was a stupid idea. But now I could  _ go _ . I could go to Harvard, Zuko.” Her voice pitched up slightly and Zuko started to panic.

“What would you major in?” he asked, hoping to distract her.

“History,” she replied immediately, “with a focus on political history.”

Zuko sighed. Of course it hadn’t been a spur of the moment thing; it was Azula, she’d never even heard of ‘living in the moment’.

“It was supposed to prove that I was just being stupid,” she said, voice small in a way he hadn’t heard in years, not since Mother and nightmares and ‘I think she’s haunting me’s that he shouldn’t have gotten so angry about.

“But what was so stupid about it?”

“I’m supposed to go to Stanford.”  _ Because that’s where Dad wants me to go _ went unsaid.

Zuko tried to think of some Azula-appropriate way to calm her down and maybe - hopefully - get her to do what  _ she _ wanted for once, but it was late, and he was on the tail-end of the closing shift, and he was supposed to be meeting everyone for pizza and drinks in ten minutes and-

“I think you should meet my friends.”

\---

The only thing keeping Azula from a panic attack of freshman year proportions was the fact that apparently Zuko is friends with Aang, who is friends with Toph-from-her-gym. She was sandwiched between said pair of chatty sophomores, with Toph occasionally knocking her shoulder, and Katara-from-civics-class glaring at her.

It wasn’t entirely Azula’s fault Ms. Wu had made her the debate captain, but Katara didn’t seem to be aware of that. It didn’t help that Azula was friends with Mai and Ty Lee, who Katara only-barely-tolerated as of this semester and previously loathed-with-her-entire-being. Katara hated her as well, apparently, and the way she kept glaring was making Azula acutely aware of her lack of make-up. 

She hated how out-of-place she was here. She didn’t  _ do _ this. She was always too busy with college applications and extracurriculars and making sure her face didn’t end up like Zuko’s because she captained the wrong sports team to go out and… party.

“Hey, Azula, right? You used to do volleyball,” said Suki-the-football-captain.

Azula had been captain of the volleyball team for one year just to round out her application to Stanford, which had been a terrible idea because she was already getting into Stanford as a legacy and it was probably what made her so appealing to damned Harvard as well. She didn’t say any of this to Suki, just nodded and looked away.

(Suki was almost as pretty as Ty Lee, even under the neon pizzeria sign, and Azula absolutely could not cope with another thing she was at risk of getting kicked out for tonight.)

“Beers,” said Suki to Zuko, “as requested. Why, by the way?”

Zuko had the audacity to grin at Azula’s horrified look - which prompted a giggle from Katara and her brother that made Azula’s cheeks heat up - and took one of the six packs. “We’re celebrating,” he said, and Azula’s heart froze over completely, “because my baby sister just got into fuckin’ Harvard.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can come find me on tumblr if you want to yell at me about avatar or my fics. Everything is cross-posted on FanFiction.Net.
> 
> I'm also a beta reader and I'm currently taking on new fics. If you want me to beta your writing you can hit me up on fanfiction.net, DM me on tumblr, or message me on Discord (neuronary #7964).
> 
> And, to top everything off, I have an avatar discord server memebenders, where we debate important topics such as 'did wan shi tong and koh have a messy break up?' and 'did sokka eat the rose in the southern raiders or did he just drop it?'


End file.
